Picture Gallery for Sat 2005-05-28 15:15:50 UTC

Media day in the Cathedral. Ed gives an explanation on how the gondola works.

Barth gets interviewed by Channel 4.

The various currencies which have currently taken up residency in my wallet. Clockwise from top left: Pounds sterling, Canadian Dollars, Swedish Kronor, U.S. Dollars, Euros (from Finland), and Norwegian Kroner.

Approximately 3:15 AM, about an hour after the penultimate sunrise for the season.

Marie listens for bubbles in the balance system.

Spider.

A strange contraption in one of the creeks that we cross on the way to Kiruna. There's a water powered turbine floating in the creek and held by the green line. As far as we can tell, the only thing the turbine does is pump water through the white hose where it gets disgorged onto the ground to the left so that it can flow back into the creek.

The device in action.

A smaller turbine on the other side of the road that's perhaps a bit more efficient: it squirts water directly into the creek and saves the water flowing back into the creek step.

A close up of the turbine.

Another shot of it. The contraption has been here for a while now, and the ground has gotten fairly wet.

"Caution: kayaking smurfs ahead!" A sign in central Kiruna.

Marie checks to see how much liquid nitrogen is remaining in the helium tank.

This is what it looks like on the top of Radar Hill when it disappears from our landscape below at the balloon base.

Flags on the Scandinavian ATC transponder which has been placed on BLAST. We're not quite sure how Bavaria made the cut.

Sticky Chess! A Velcro based chess set that Mark and Paul developed and have been marketing in their spare time.

Mr. Solar Ephemeris gives up the ghost as we move into 24 hour sunlight and it gets a bit stumped on calculating rise and set times. (Fortunately Mr. Lunar Ephemeris right above is doing fine.)